tural proportion. Deformity arises from the want of
the common proportions; but the necessary result of their existence in
any object is not beauty. If we suppose proportion in natural things to
be relative to custom and use, the nature of use and custom will show
that beauty, which is a _positive_ and powerful quality, cannot result
from it. We are so wonderfully formed, that, whilst we are creatures
vehemently desirous of novelty, we are as strongly attached to habit and
custom. But it is the nature of things which hold us by custom, to
affect us very little whilst we are in possession of them, but strongly
when they are absent. I remember to have frequented a certain place,
every day for a long time together; and I may truly say that, so far
from finding pleasure in it, I was affected with a sort of weariness and
disgust; I came, I went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any
means I passed by the usual time of my going thither, I was remarkably
uneasy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old track. They who use
snuff, take it almost without being sensible that they take it, and the
acute sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so
sharp a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is the
most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed so far are use and habit from
being causes of pleasure merely as such, that the effect of constant use
is to make all things of whatever kind entirely unaffecting. For as use
at last takes off the painful effect of many things, it reduces the
pleasurable effect in others in the same manner, and brings both to a
sort of mediocrity and indifference. Very justly is use called a second
nature; and our natural and common state is one of absolute
indifference, equally prepared for pain or pleasure. But when we are
thrown out of this state, or deprived of anything requisite to maintain
us in it; when this chance does not happen by pleasure from some
mechanical cause, we are always hurt. It is so with the second nature,
custom, in all things which relate to it. Thus the want of the usual
proportions in men and other animals is sure to disgust, though their
presence is by no means any cause of real pleasure. It is true that the
proportions laid down as causes of beauty in the human body, are
frequently found in beautiful ones, because they are generally found in
all mankind; but if it can be shown too that they are found without
beauty, and that beauty freque